‘Last Week Tonight’s Season 2 Opener On Par With Season 1 Wrap

Last Week TonightWith John Oliver clocked 720,000 viewers in its premiere telecast at 11 PM this past Sunday. That’s compared to 1.1 million viewers in April, when HBO unveiled the show and Oliver debuted as host of his own weekly program.

Sunday’s opening audience is on-par-ish with last November 9, when Last Week Tonight wrapped its first season with an average of 796,000 viewers tuned in to the episode’s first telecast at 11:15 PM. For the night, the finale episode tallied 846,000 viewers. Over its first season, John Oliver’s show clocked an average gross audience of 4 million viewers, putting it on par with HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher.

It’s unclear from the one Season 2 premiere number of this past Sunday night, how the episode will fare overall across its various plays, including that night, other repeats this week on the network, and adding in viewing across other platforms. HBO notes it no longer shares single-day stats and will not put out any numbers on Sunday’s season starter for a couple weeks when Live + 7 data is available,

In April, when Oliver‘s debut as host of Last Week Tonight opened strong with those 1.1 million viewers tuned in at 11 PM, the second play that night alone lifted the show’s total for that night to 1.4 million.

Comparing Sunday’s opener with last November’s wrapper, it appears Oliver’s show held firm in many key demos, but slid from 153,000 viewers to 78,000 among women 18-49. Among men 25-54, however, his audience grew from 237,000 to 330,000.